Who would’ve thought moving home and starting a new job would eat so much time? Finally the time has been found to sit down and spend some quality time with a shuttle wheel. Here’s the third Cosplay Cascade video featuring cosplayers out and about the Keele University campus at AmeCon 2012! Due to the building works and general faff it’s not got the amazing scenery and variety I had planned but hey, at the end of the day it’s about people in brightly coloured costumes throwing things at each other. I think.

More lessons learned, and the steadicam had gained a loose screw which went mostly undetected but now has been found and severely punished, hopefully I won’t have the same troubles next time!

As an offshoot there’s a quickish video made entirely out of Avatar cosplay footage, that’s just how big the groups were over the weekend! That can be found on YouTube here.

2012’s summer con has come and gone, AmeCon returned to the luscious Keele University for a second time, only to find it was vastly lest luscious due to a massive amount of building works running hideously over schedule. Duly crossing off about 80% of the locations from my photo map it was very difficult to find new places to get photos and video without background ugliness D:

On top of that, the main meeting point was a mess of rubble and industrial fencing so getting around and finding gaggles of cosplayers was a lot more difficult than usual. Kind of the same issue I had at Expo, the extra time taken to find people and drag them off to usable locations then ferry back and find more ate most of my day leaving not a whole lot for the actual photography part.. In other words, I’m not happy with the variety of costumes I caught again, I need to acquire more minions. Any volunteers?

Nonetheless! We all tried our best and the above issues – which I was ready to declare the ruination of the entire con when I found out – did not daunt congoers from making the most of it and enjoying the hell out of the weekend anyway. Sometimes all people need is an excuse to meet up and prat about in costume!

Thanks to all who did hunt me down, apologies to all who tried and failed, and a shoutout to the awesome Avatar groups formed on Friday and Sunday, it’s been a long time since I’ve had that much fun with a group and the numerous bending toys I came up with got a fair bit of use! Although I was so busy setting them up I think everyone ELSE got more shots of them in use than I did :p

Finally, congratulations to the lovely Refira for taking the second UK representative slot for EuroCosplay 2012 with her Toothless from How to Train Your Dragon, she’s been making amazing costumes for as long as I’ve known her and it’s wonderful to see one getting some recognition, in the face of some fierce competition no less!

Did one for Aya so here’s one for the next summer con, AmeCon! Set once more at the picturesque Keele University it has the most gorgeous location for cosplay photos and video out of any of our conventions so if you’ve got something special lined up – this is the event to show it off at! To help, and possibly inspire, here’s a blatantly-thieved Google Maps image overlaid with the Keele Uni conference map and then covered with arrows showing where I got all my photos last time, for people looking to find the perfect backdrop for their costumes.

Blue buildings should be the main areas of convention-happening (Keele Hall for breakfast, Student Union for evening events and the other two for panels and day events) – as I understand them anyways.

Green are other buildings, marked so you don’t try to walk through them I guess, thinking they’re on the map as some sort of squareish tree.

Purple are accomodation blocks, I don’t know which ones we’ve got access to but they’re the ones marked on the conference guide. I was in Lindsay Halls last time hence why there’s plenty of reference shots from there ;)